THE LAST TEMPTATION OF DR. DALTON (10 page)

“You’re just a lot braver than you give yourself credit for. Hell, you’re the bravest woman I know, living in that house alone, doing what you’re doing here. Being afraid of a rip tide after nearly drowning in one is normal. Just a tiny, human nick in that feisty spirit of yours.” He lifted the strand away from her face as he looked at the little golden flecks in her eyes, her lashes stuck together with salt water. “I’m proud of you for facing that fear. For getting in the water even though you didn’t want to.” Tucking her hair behind her ear to join the rest that lay flat against her scalp, he suddenly saw something he’d never noticed before.

Her ear was oddly shaped—not just different, slightly abnormal. Nearly invisible scarring appeared on and around it. Probably no one without plastic surgery experience would be able to see it at all, but he could. He pressed his mouth to it, touching the contours of it with his lips and tongue.

“What happened to your ear?”

Her fingers dug into his shoulder blades. “My...ear? What do you mean?”

He let his mouth travel down her damp throat and back up to her jaw, because he just couldn’t resist any longer; across her chin then up, slipping softly across her wet, salty lips before he lifted his gaze back to hers. “Your ear. Were you in an accident? Or was it something congenital?”

She was silent for a moment, just looking back at him, her eyes somber until she sighed. “Congenital. I was born with microtia.”

“What grade of microtia? Was your ear just misshapen?”

“No, it was grade three. I only had this weird little skin flap that didn’t look like an ear at all. We were told that’s often accompanied by atresia, but I was blessed to have an ear canal, so I can hear pretty well out of it now.”

“When did you have it reconstructed? Were you living in the States?”

She nodded. “I think doctors sometimes do the procedure younger now. But mine wanted to wait until I was nine, since that’s when the ear grows to about ninety percent of its adult size.” A small smile touched her mouth. “I still remember, when I was about five, why he told me I should be a little older before it was fixed—that it would look strange for a little girl to have a big, grown-up-sized ear, which at the time I thought was a pretty funny visual.”

He gave her a soft kiss. “So you remember living with your ear looking abnormal?”

“Remember?” She gave a little laugh that had no humor in the sound at all. “Kids thought it was so hilarious to tease me about it. Called me ‘earless Edwards.’ One time a kid brought a CD to class for everyone to listen to, then said to me, ‘Oh, right, you can’t because you don’t have an ear!’ I wanted to crawl under my desk and hide.”

He shook his head, hating that she’d had to go through that. “Kids can be nasty little things, that’s for sure; convinced they’re just being funny. Now I know where you got that chip on your shoulder from.”

He was glad to see the shadows leave her eyes as she narrowed them at him, green sparks flying. “I do not have a chip on my shoulder. I just believe it’s more efficient for me to drive and do whatever I need to do than take ten minutes talking about it just to dance around a man’s ego.”

“Good thing I’m so full of myself, which you’ve enjoyed telling me several times. Otherwise you would have crushed my feelings by now.”

“As though I could possibly hurt your feelings.”

“You might be surprised.” And she probably would be, if she knew how rattled he’d felt for days. How much he wanted to leave while somehow, at the very same time, wanting to stay a little longer.

Her palms swept over his shoulder blades, wrapped more fully around his back, and he took that as an invitation for another soft kiss. Her mouth tasted so good, salty-sweet and irresistible.

“Tell me more about your surgery.” He lifted his finger to stroke the shell of it. “Did they harvest cartilage from your ribs to build the framework for the new ear?”

“Yes. I have a small scar near my sternum, but you can barely see it now. They finished it in three procedures.”

“Well, it looks great. Whoever performed the surgery was very good at it. I bet you were happy.”

“Happy?” Her smile grew wider. “I felt normal for the first time in my life. No longer the freak without an ear. It was...amazing.”

Now it was all clear as glass. He pressed another kiss to her now smiling mouth. “I finally get why you built the plastic surgery wing, and why it’s so important to you. You know first-hand how it feels to be scarred or look different from everyone else.”

She nodded, her eyes now the passionately intense green he’d seen so often the past week; the passion that was such an integral part of who she was. “I know saving lives is important—more important than helping people view themselves differently, as you said. But I can tell you that feeling good about the way you look, not feeling like a freak, is so important to a person’s psyche. And, even though I had to live for a while feeling like that, I know how blessed I was to have access to doctors who could make it better. You know as well as anyone that so many people around the world don’t. And I want to give the people here, at least, that same opportunity to look and feel normal. Can you understand that?”

His answer was to stroke her hair from her forehead, cup her cheek in his palm and kiss her. From the minute he’d met her, she’d impressed him with her determination, and now he was even more impressed. She’d used a negative experience from her own life to try to make life better for others and worked damn hard to make it happen.

His tongue delved into her mouth, licking, tasting the ocean water and the flavor that was uniquely, delectably her. Tasting the passion that was so much a part of her. He was swept along by her to another place, deeper and farther and more powerfully than any wave could ever take him.

CHAPTER TWELVE

A
S
THE
SURF
lapped over their bodies, Charlie let herself drown in the kiss, in the taste of his cool, salty lips, his warm tongue deliciously exploring her mouth. Her hands stroked down his shoulder blades and back, reveling in the feel of the hard muscle beneath his smooth skin.

She tunneled her fingers into his thick, wet hair, wild and sexy and black as Liberian coal. His muscled thigh nudged between hers, sending waves of pleasure through every nerve. The taste of his mouth, the touch of his hands, the feel of his arousal against her took her breathlessly back to their incredible night of lovemaking.

“Charlotte,” he whispered, his lips leaving hers to trail down her throat, to lick the water pooled there, then continuing their journey lower until his mouth covered her nipple, gently sucking on it through her wet nylon swimsuit.

She gasped. “Trent. That’s so good. I—”

The sound of Patience laughing made her eyes pop open as he lifted his head from her breast. His eyes— no longer the light, laughing blue she was used to seeing, but instead a glittering near-black—met hers. Everything about him seemed hard—his chest rising and falling against hers, his arms taut around her, his hips and what was between them.

“Charlotte,” he said through clenched teeth. “More than anything, I want to make love to you right now. Right here. To wrap your legs around me and swim back into the waves; nobody would know I’m diving deep inside of you.” His mouth covered hers in a steaming kiss. “But I guess that will have to wait until later.”

If it hadn’t already been difficult to breathe, his words nearly would have made her faint from the lack of oxygen in her brain. Even though she knew Patience and John Adams were fairly close by, she couldn’t bring herself to move. The undulating water that wrapped around them was the most intimate cocoon she’d ever experienced in her life and she didn’t want it to end. Couldn’t find the will to detangle herself from his arms. “So I guess our deal is off.”

“Our deal?”

“Not to start anything up again.”

“Our deal has obviously been a challenge for me.” His mouth lifted in a slow smile, his eyes gleaming. “Maybe we can come up with a slightly modified deal.”

“Such as?”

His mouth traveled across her cheek, lowered to her ear. “We make love one more time. Cool down this heat between us and get it out of our systems. Then back to just colleagues for the last days I’m here so we won’t have that second goodbye we both want to avoid.”

The thought of one, just one more time with him, sent her heart into a crazy rhythm. “I agree to your terms. Just once.”

“Just once. So—”

The sound of distant shouting interrupted him. They both turned their heads at the same time and saw a few of the surfers down the beach pulling what looked like an unconscious young man, or a body, from the water.

* * *

Trent sprinted down the beach with Charlotte on his heels.

Blood poured through the fingers of a young man sitting on the sand, holding his hand to his forehead. The group of surfers gathered around him looked concerned, and one shouted to another who was running to a mound of things they’d apparently brought with them. He returned with a shirt that he handed to the injured surfer, who pressed it to his head.

“Looks like you need a hand here,” Trent said as he approached the injured boy. “I’m a doctor. Will you let me take a look?”

“You a doctor?” The young man looked utterly surprised, and no wonder. There weren’t too many doctors around there, period, and it was just damned good luck he happened to be on the beach when the kid was hurt.

“Yes. I work at the Edwards Mission Hospital. This lady is the director.” He smiled at Charlotte, now standing next to him, before crouching down. “What’s your name? Will you show me what we’re dealing with here?”

“Murvee Browne,” he replied, lowering his hand with the now-bloody shirt balled up in it. “I was surfing and, when the board flipped, I think the fin got me.”

“Looks like it.” Trent leaned closer to study the wound. It was one damned deep gash, probably five centimeters, stretching from the hairline diagonally across his forehead to his eyebrow. The injury appeared to slice all the way to the skull, but it was a little hard to tell while it was still bleeding so much. He’d let the kid know it was serious, but reassure him so he wouldn’t freak out at what he was going to have to do to repair it. “You’ve got a pretty good one there. But at least it’s just your forehead. I took care of one nasty surf accident victim where the guy’s eyelid was slit open too.”

Murvee grimaced while his friends gathered even closer to stare at the gash.

“You did it good, oh!” one friend said. “You so lucky the doctor is here today.”

Murvee looked worried as he stared at Trent. “What you charge for fixing me up, doc? I don’t make much. My mother makes money at the market, but she needs what I have to help take care of my brothers and sisters.”

“Why don’t you press that cloth against your forehead real firmly again and keep it there to stop the bleeding, okay, Murvee?” Chase said. “You don’t have to worry about paying me. Miss Charlotte here pays me a lot, and she gets mad if I don’t do any work to earn it.”

He shot a teasing glance at her and she rolled her eyes in return, but there was a smile in them too. “We’re going to have to have a little talk about your spreading rumors of what a tyrant I am,” she said.

He chuckled and turned his attention back to Murvee. “Are you feeling okay? Not real dizzy or anything?”

“No. I feel all right.”

“I’d like to take you back to the hospital to get you stitched up.”

“No hospital.” Murvee frowned, looking mulish. “I have to be home soon and I have to go to work. I can just have my mom fix it.”

“Murvee...”

“How about stitching him in the jeep?” Charlotte suggested, giving him a look that said he was going to have to be flexible here. “I know you brought your bag with you. I’ll help any way I can.”

Trent sighed. He knew taking Murvee to the hospital and getting his wound taken care of there would take hours, and likely be tough on his family—if he could get the kid to go at all. “Fine. Since you seem okay other than the gash, I won’t insist. Let’s go to the car.”

Murvee’s friends helped him stand and the three of them headed down the beach. Trent kept an eye on the young man as they trudged to the car, and he thankfully did seem to be feeling all right, not shocked or woozy. Charlotte opened the back of her banged-up SUV and they worked together to get the kid situated inside and lying on a blanket with his feet propped up on the side beneath the window before Trent grabbed his medical bag.

“What do you need me to do first?” Charlotte asked.

“Did you bring any fresh water I can wash it out with? And are all the towels sandy, or do we have a clean one?” he asked.

“I brought extra towels. And I have water.”

“Good.” He turned to Murvee. “Let me see if the bleeding has stopped.” The young man lifted away the shirt; the bleeding had, thankfully, lessened. Trent got everything set up as best he could in the cramped space, putting his flashlight, gauze, Betadine, local anesthetic and suture kit next to the young man. Squeezing out some of the sanitizer he always kept in his bag, he thoroughly rubbed it over his hands and between his fingers then snapped on gloves.

“Here’s the water and towels.” Charlotte came to stand next to him, knees resting against the bumper of the car. “What else can I do?”

He looked at her, standing there completely calm, and marveled again that she took on any task thrown at her calmly and efficiently. Including dealing with a bleeding gash that would look so awful to most non-medical professionals, it might make them feel a little faint, or at least turn away so they wouldn’t have to look at it.

“You want to wash out the wound to make sure it’s good and clean before I suture it? Put the folded towel under his head. After I inject the lidocaine, I want you to pour a steady stream of the water through the wound.” He drew the anesthetic into the syringe. “You still doing all right, Murvee? I’m going to give you some numbing medicine. I have to use a needle, and it’ll burn a little, but you won’t feel the stitches.”

Murvee held his breath and winced a few times as he injected it. “Sorry. I know this hurts, but pretty soon it will feel numb.”

“I don’t care, doc. I’m very grateful to you for helping me.”

“I’m glad we were here today.” He’d felt that way on many occasions in his life, since this kind of thing seemed to happen fairly often when he was working in the field, or even like today when he was touring and relaxing. Which was why he’d become convinced that whatever higher power was out there truly had a hand in the workings of the universe.

“Am I doing this right?” Charlotte asked as she continued washing out the wound.

“Perfect.” He studied it, satisfied that it looked pretty clean now. “I think we’re good to go. Thanks.” He squeezed a stream of antiseptic on gauze then brushed it along the wound’s edges.

Trent saw Charlotte reach for the young man’s hand and give it a squeeze. “Tell me about surfing, Murvee. How long have you been doing it?”

“Me and my friends surf for a year now. A guy from the UK was surfing here a while ago and he was really good. He showed some people how to surf, and now many of us do. I want to get good enough to compete in the Liberian Surfing Championships, which has been around about five years now, I think.”

Trent glanced at Charlotte again as he got the suture materials together, smiling at the warm and interested expression on her face. He loved the many facets to her personality: the feisty fireball, the take-charge director, the soft and sexy woman whose love-making he knew would stay in his memory a long, long time and the person he was seeing now. She was nurturing and caring for this young man, distracting him with casual chit-chat so Murvee wouldn’t think too hard about the time-consuming procedure Trent was about to do on him.

He nodded at his small but powerful flashlight and looked at Charlotte. “Will you shine that on the wound so I can see better?” They were parked within the trees and, while it was far from optimal conditions for suturing, the flashlight illuminated well enough.

She pointed the light at the wound. “Does that help?”

“Yes, great,” he said as he began suturing. It was deep and would require a three-layer closure. The boy was lucky a medic was here today. While the injury would likely have healed eventually on its own, his scars would have been bold and obvious, not to mention there was a good chance the wound would have become infected, maybe seriously.

“You should see the way your head looks, Murvee. You want to check it out in a mirror, so you can watch what Dr. Trent has to do to repair that nasty gash?”

“I don’t know about that, Charlotte.” Trent frowned at her in surprise. Trust a non-medical assistant to come up with a wacky idea like that, though it was probably because, if she’d had a wound that required suturing, Ms. Toughness would have wanted to watch.

“I would like to see,” Murvee said. “I want to tell my friends what you had to do, what it looked like.”

“So long as you don’t faint on me.” He smiled at the young man, who gave him a nice smile in return that seemed pretty normal and not particularly anxious.

Charlotte held up a small mirror in a powder compact and Murvee took it from her, moving his head around so he could see himself.

“Please hold still, Murvee.” When this was over, he was going to give Charlotte a few pointers on doctor-assisting. She’d done a great job helping the boy relax, but this wasn’t helping
him
, though he had to appreciate the ingenuity in her distraction techniques. If the boy didn’t get queasy, that was.

“What exactly you doing?” Murvee asked as he looked at Trent suturing his wound in the mirror, seeming fascinated, thankfully, instead of disturbed.

Since the kid asked, he figured he might as well give him the full details. “Your wound was so deep I could see some of your skull bone.”

Murvee’s eyes widened. “No kidding?”

“No kidding. I repaired the galea first—that’s the layer that covers the bone. Now I’m sewing up the layer under the skin—we call it the subcutaneous tissue, or ‘sub-Q.’ You’ve got some very healthy sub-Q.”

“Yeah, man. Fine sub-Q.” He grinned, obviously proud, and Trent and Charlotte both laughed. “That’s crazy-looking,” Murvee said, staring into the mirror.

“The whole human body is kind of crazy-looking. One of the cool things about being a doctor is learning about how crazy it really is. And amazing.”

Murvee looked at him then and Trent was glad the boy finally lowered the mirror. “Is my head going to look like this always, doc?”

“Not always.” He gave Charlotte a look that she interpreted correctly, thank goodness, since she took the mirror from Murvee and tucked it into her purse. “After I finish, you’ll look a little like Frankenstein, and your friends will be jealous of how cool and tough you look.” He smiled, knowing from experience that boys and young men related to that and were usually amused. “But by sewing it in three steps using very tiny stitches it will heal well and, over time, the scar will become a thin line. You’ll be as handsome as ever and all the girls will think you’re great.”

Murvee grinned at Trent’s commentary, as he’d expected. “Girls think I’m great already.”

The sound of Charlotte’s little laugh brought their attention back to her. “I bet they do,” she said. “And now you can talk to them about how you were hit by your board while you were surfing, which not many guys around here do, and ended up getting stitched up on the beach by a world-class surgeon.”

“World-class?” Trent smiled, wondering if she’d really meant that, or if she was just talking to keep Murvee relaxed as he worked. Wondering why it felt nice for her to say it, when he’d always been sure he didn’t need anyone’s admiration or accolades.

“Are you kidding me?” Her green eyes met his and held, a brief moment of connection that warmed him in a totally different way than she’d warmed him in the water. “You’re amazing. With technique like yours, you could be working as a plastic surgeon in Beverly Hills.”